Arts, Briefly

Compiled by Ben Sisario

Published: March 24, 2005

Prize for Ha Jin

Ha Jin, below, has won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for the second time, for his novel ''War Trash'' , about a Chinese prisoner of war held by Americans during the Korean War. Mr. Jin, who won the prize in 2000 for his novel ''Waiting,'' will receive $15,000 at the 25th annual ceremony at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington on May 14. The other four finalists are each to receive $5,000. They are Jerome Charyn for ''The Green Lantern'' (Thunder's Mouth Press), Edwidge Danticat for ''The Dew Breaker'' (Alfred A. Knopf), Marilynne Robinson for ''Gilead'' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and Steve Yarbrough for ''Prisoners of War'' (Alfred A. Knopf).

Pop Charts: 50 Cent Again

50 Cent's ''Massacre'' (Interscope) tops the Billboard album charts again this week, but just barely. The album sold 364,000 copies last week, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a drop of more than 50 percent from the week before and just 25,000 more than its nearest competitor, the 18th volume of the pop series ''Now That's What I Call Music!'' In yet another modest week of sales, Jack Johnson's ''In Between Dreams'' (Brushfire) reached No.3 with 99,000 albums sold, Green Day's ''American Idiot'' (Reprise) rose one spot to No.4 with 76,000, and 50 Cent's now-friend-now-foe-now-friend the Game dropped to No.5 with his album, ''The Documentary'' (Interscope), which sold 68,000 copies. Music sales for 2005 are down by 8.5 percent from last year at this time, at 123 million units, Billboard reported.

'Angry Men' on Overtime

When the Roundabout Theater Company opened ''Twelve Angry Men,'' below, at the American Airlines Theater in October it was supposed to be a limited engagement that would end in December. Then it extended, and extended again, and extended again and again, six times. Now it has extended for the seventh, and, the producers promise, last time. It will now end on May 15 so that ''The Constant Wife'' can begin previews at the theater 12 days later. George C. Wolfe, the director and outgoing producer at the Public Theater, will receive the annual career achievement award by New Dramatists, the playwright development workshop. The prize will be given at a benefit luncheon on May 17 at the New York Marriott Marquis in Times Square. Wendy C. Goldberg has been appointed by the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn., to be the artistic director of its National Playwrights Conference. Ms. Goldberg, 31, is currently artistic associate at Arena Stage in Washington.

Affleck to Direct

Ben Affleck, below, is to direct his first feature film, an adaptation of a book by Dennis Lehane, who wrote the novel ''Mystic River.'' The film, to be called ''Gone, Baby, Gone,'' will be about two working-class private detectives searching for a missing child and will be released by Disney's Touchstone Pictures, the studio announced. Shooting is to begin this fall in Boston. But Mr. Affleck, 32, has directed before: in 1993 he made a short film, ''I Killed My Lesbian Wife, Hung Her on a Meat Hook, and Now I Have a Three-Picture Deal at Disney.''

Footnotes

Last night's performance by Joan Rivers was the final show at Fez, the somewhat fancy, somewhat scruffy basement cabaret on Lafayette Street in the East Village that is closing for renovations. But the club's regular Thursday night attraction, the Mingus Orchestra, is not missing a single week of work. The group -- with many of the same musicians as the Mingus Big Band, which played at Fez for 13 years -- will begin a regular Thursday night gig tonight at Joe's Pub, just up Lafayette Street. Shows are at 11 and 1 a.m.